Fix it
by Gumnut
Summary: He would fix it. He had to.


Title: Fix it  
Author: Gumnut  
Fandom: Star Trek: the original series  
Characters: Scott, Spock  
Challenge: Ad Astra - 'Any series, any characters, any rating, any length. The first line must be (or extremely close to being): "I realize that you are my commanding officer, but I won't let you do it, and orders be damned."'  
Rating: PG  
Summary: He would fix it. He had to.  
Word count: 1,230  
Spoilers & warnings: None  
Disclaimer: Mine? You gotta be kidding. Money? Don't have any, don't bother.  
Author's notes: This is for **slwatson**. I said I'd write her one oneday, and amazingly, I actually did. I'm not too sure how good this is. My beta is in bed and I haven't had it checked, so all errors are mine.

Fix it  
For the 4th Ad Astra challenge and for SL Watson who continues to inspire me.  
By Gumnut  
29 Mar 2009

"I realize that you are my commanding officer, but I won't let you do it, and orders be damned!" He knew he had raised his voice, something he had sworn he wouldn't do, but that damned stiff-lipped Vulcan calm rode up his spine and gnawed on his brain. "I am afraid, Mr Spock, that there are limits and I will not step over them."

"Mr Scott, time is of the essence. However, if you do not comply, then I will be forced to remove you from duty."

"Apart from the fact there is no one to replace me, they don't make a crowbar big enough to pry me away. I'm calling it, Mr Spock, so you can drop the dramatics and help me, or go harass someone else, because I'm busy." And with that he turned back to the control panel and continued to try and beat it into submission. Damned, deep end of space, frickin' half brained mechanics. He should have known better than to leave the shuttlecraft to anyone but himself. But no, 'Come with us, Scotty, live it up a little, what could possibly go wrong?' "Well, ye bloody found out didn't ye." It hissed out between his teeth, but he knew the Vulcan had heard him and he didn't care.

There was no bloody way he was letting any of them die due to his neglect. And neglect it was. The starboard thruster pack had been fine when they arrived on the outpost. It wasn't any more. He wasn't sure why, but be damned if he was going to go down because of a mechanical fault. And neither was the captain or anyone else.

Jim Kirk lay between the centre seats, McCoy hovering over some nasty burns and a head injury. The thruster pack had been dramatic in its death throes, taking out half the control panel and the pilot with it. The electrical jolt had shorted out just about everything else and now the four of them were little more than another spinning asteroid in this ass end of space.

He had managed to isolate the failed system and restart life support, but the engines refused to fire and for the love of god, he didn't know why.

And now Spock had dreamed up a half brained idea to spacewalk outside to locate the problem.

Normally this would not be an issue. Spacewalking was part and parcel of working in space. But this solar system had bite, and as far as he was concerned, was a stupid place to build an outpost in the first place. But security and all that, thrived on nasty radiation that hid plenty of military type things from sensors. Hidden enough that they didn't want the flagship parking on their doorstep for everyone to see. So special meeting, jump on a shuttlecraft, and, while the Enterprise hid, mosey on down to have a beer and chat.

Oh, and by the way, keep inside your spacecraft on the way in or the radiation will fry all the hair off your body. After it has melted your brain.

Charming place to visit.

He nudged a wire too far to the right and it made contact with another. "Damn, bloody thing…" It spat at him. Bright orange sparks left ghost trails on his retinas.

"Mr Scott-"

"Mr Spock, will ye listen to me? I can fix this. I will fix this. There is no need-"

"Mr Scott!" Scott's heart froze. To hear that voice rise in volume was enough to stop any man in his tracks. "We are out of time. The captain is dying."

The frozen lump dropped into his boots and Scott swallowed forcing calm. "I know, Spock. But we are not going to lose you as well."

It happened every time. The cool, calm and collected Vulcan, the same man who declared himself void of emotion on a regular basis, was frantic because the captain's life was at stake. He had seen it so many times. Spock defied orders, took horrible risks and mowed down whatever opposition in his way to protect the man he followed.

Well, be damned if he thought he stood alone in that, and there was no way, no way, Scott was going to let him sacrifice himself because of a simple and stupid mechanical fault his engineer could have prevented if he hadn't been sitting in a bar sucking on whatever it was they called scotch out here.

And the captain…the captain just had to hold on.

He crosswired the second backup circuit with the first and giving the computer a program adaptation algorithm, he tried again.

The backup circuit failed to respond.

Damn it.

He nudged it with his probe. The backup board for navigation was thankfully nowhere near as fried as the circuitry in communications, but it was still slightly cooked. It had taken him an hour to reach this level of possible repair.

He did want to investigate as to whether Kirk's silence now was a good thing or a bad.

He suspected he knew which and didn't want to know.

"Mr Scott-"

"Goddamnit, Spock, I said no. I don't care about protocol. I don't care about the chain of command. You and the captain are not going to die. Do you hear me?" And he found himself shaking his probe in Spock's face. He blinked and said in a much calmer and controlled voice, "I will fix this. Trust me."

And that was it. The first officer turned back to the captain and sat there for some time.

Spock didn't say anything when the engines finally fired. He didn't say a word when the Enterprise came into view. In fact over the next several weeks while Scott sat back and waited for the inevitable court martial, nothing was said.

The captain recovered, if slowly and was soon to be seen once again jogging through the corridors on his morning run. Mr Spock acted as if their encounter had never occurred and McCoy was too busy harassing the captain to spare a word for Scott for several weeks.

So nothing was said.

Until two months later. Hip deep in alien jello, his engine room awash with the sticky stuff, he was fighting to revive a sabotaged transporter network.

"Scotty, we need to get out of here before we drown in this gunk." The captain's voice over the intercom stated the obvious yet again.

"I am aware of that captain. There are systems shorting out all over the ship. We canna go into warp in this condition. The only way to solve the problem is to use the transporter. I'm fixing it as fast as I can."

"I'll send down Spock to assist you."

"Captain," The first Officer's voice was quiet over the speaker. "While I can assist Mr Scott, I know of no one who knows these systems as well as our chief engineer. I trust Mr Scott has the problem under control."

Scott narrowly avoided crossing a circuit that would have blown the entire assembly.

Spock still ended up hip deep in goo beside him, but the engineer did not forget those words. And in some of the hairiest situations in the years to follow, he often found himself remembering that apart from the captain, there was also a Vulcan up there who trusted him to fix it.

So he did.

-o-o-o-


End file.
